Tuesday, September 20, 2011

A Big New Crib for Matt Bomer and his Brood

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We recently received a covert communique from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial who tattled to Your Mama that rapidly rising television star Matt Bomer recently acquired a stately home in the hoity-toity Hancock Park area of Los Angeles, CA.

Mister Bomer–who has chisel-chinned good looks and a slim, toned and all but hairless body–started up his Tinseltown Ladder of Fame and Fortune in the early Noughts when he landed a part on the now defunct daytime soap story Guiding Light. Since then his career has been on a steady if not exactly hot-footed upward trajectory. He's appeared or starred in a number of episodic television programs that include Tru Calling, Traveler, and Chuck. For the last couple of years he's starred on the comedy crime drama White Collar, which was recently picked up for a fourth season. A quick perusal of Mister Bomer's resume on the Internet Movie Data Basereveals that in addition to his basic cable television program he's got two upcoming films, the Steven Soderbergh-directed Magic Mike and the sci-fi thriller In Time with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried.

In the last year or so Mister Bomer has branched out into singing and live theater. He sang a duet with Diahann Carroll on an episode of White Collar and he exercised his vocal chords with Broadway performer Kelli O'Hara at the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors. Last night Mister Bomer participated in a chamber reading of Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black's new play 8, which the Hollywood Reporter described as "a drama based on the litigation to overturn California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that reversed the state supreme court's ruling recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex unions."

Mister Bomer, who often wears a wedding ring when not working, revealed in March (2011) on the Today show that he has three young children. It was an unexpected disclosure from a man who–as is his right–politely pussyfoots around questions about his personal life even though the internet is riddled and rife with very detailed reports of his long-term romantic affiliations and connections.

Anyhoo, a peek and a poke around public property records shows Mister Bomer–through a trust–paid $3,215,000 for his new house in the affluent and historic Los Angeles neighborhood of Hancock Park.

Listing information we cajoled up out of the interweb shows the 1922 English Country crib measures 4,741 square feet and contains a total of 6 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms. Listing information went on to explain that one of the bedrooms and bathrooms makes up a staff suite on the ground floor and another of the five remaining upstairs bedrooms was converted by the seller and/or previous occupant to a dressing room with built-in shelves, drawers and hanging bars.

The Ozzie and Harriet-style house sits well away from the street behind an ivy-covered wall/fence and a thickly planted front garden. A discreet archway in the brick and clapboard front façade leads the way to the smartly restrained but still impressive entrance hall blessed with gleaming ebony hardwood floors, a vintage light fixture, a switchback carved wood staircase, and leaded glass windows.

The step down formal living room stretches clean through from the front of the house where a bay window overlooks the front yard to the back of the house where a bank of 12-pane French doors open to the terrace that extends off the back of the house. Arched doorways that repeat the architectural motif first encountered at the front entrance flank the fireplace and connect to the adjacent library with built-in book cases and a second fireplace.

The generous formal dining room wrapped in an magnificent old-school wall paper that depicts birds sitting on tree branches, has unusually high ceilings, more 12-pane French doors that open to the terrace at the back of the house, and a brass and crystal chandelier that should be dropped much lower to encourage a more intimate setting.

The rich and shiny black hardwood floors carry into the center island kitchen complete with white raised panel cabinetry with glass-fronted uppers, beige flecked granite counter tops that offer multiple work areas, and all the high-grade stainless steel appliances that can and ought to be expected in a three million dollar house. It's all a bit too trad for Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's taste but out biggest issue with the kitchen isn't that it's traditional but that the cabinets don't reach all the way to the ceiling. That awkward sliver of space ain't good for nuthin' but unnecessary up-lighting and pesky dust connecting. We have no idea if Mister Bomer plans to re-work the cookery but iffin he does Your Mama has our fingers and toes crossed he'll have the good sense to install custom cabinetry that reaches all the way to the damn ceiling.

But we digress. The kitchen steps down into a family room large enough to accommodate an informal dining area and cozy family room with brick fireplace and full walls of windows and doors that dramatically reach from the floor clear up to the wood-beamed ceiling and open to the wide terrace at the back of the house.

As mentioned above, all main rooms on the ground floor (library, living, dining, family rooms) open to the broad multi-purpose entertaining/lounging/dining/sunbathing terrace that steps down to the deep backyard where the heated swimming pool and spa are set directly into the grass with a wide coping that could be concrete or maybe some other more elegant material like limestone. Listing photos show a removable child-safety fence can be installed around the rim of the pool, a necessary safety measure Your Mama thinks is ass-ugly but Mister Father of Three Bomer probably finds comforting.

The electronically operated gated driveway shoots up next to the house to a sizable motor court at the rear of the property where a detached four-car garage has vast amounts of storage in an undeveloped loft space. The view from the backyard into the parking lot-sized concrete motor court is partially obscured by anemic row of birch trees and an enclosed rose garden entered through an arched trellis laden with thorny roses. If he hasn't already we imagine that Mister Bomer has had a celebrity-style jungle gym erected in the backyard where his trio of offspring can swing, slide and climb to their hearts' content.

Based on information and intel provided by The Bizzy Boys, we can link Mister Bomer to a quirky Craftsman/Shingled Tudor-style mini-mansion just half mile from his new house. Records do not indicate that Mister Bomer owns (or owned) the residence. That would indicate Mister Bomer leased the property and indeed Your Mama managed to scare up listing information that shows the house (shown above) is currently available for lease at $8,600 per month. Listing information goes on to indicate the house was erected in 1915, measures a family-friendly 4,614 square feet and includes 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms and 3 fireplaces.

31 comments:

Since it is so flowery and girly, like 80's style...mmm...I have a funny logical feeling that he and his husband will pretty much change the whole look.

If you google Simon Halls house before which he sold...link up the dots....it's a very masculine, minimalist house..really nice actually....and no frilly curtains.

I know how you guys love to be terribly (and wrongly judgmental) presumptuous with comments like with NPH's house but I think many people buy houses because of the size, location, price etc and then they change it! Shock!

lush landscaping and nice exterior. Comfortable house that needs a litte day-core editing; however, the William Haines voice in my head says, "Don't you dare touch the pale Chinese wallpaper in the formal dining room!"

Great bones with lots of potential; too bad it's not on a quieter side street, but it's hardly a "kick-the-can" neighborhood anyway...

As for the man himself, it's refreshing to see him maintaining a "non-issue" approach to same sex parenting. Rather than accusing him of closeted behavior by not discussing his sexuality, it looks like his reticence will work out in the long run to keep things on an even keel for his husband & kids.

Yes, it is useful to the gay community that those in the spotlight demonstrate the equality of all our lives, especially for those still struggling to come out, but ––– I look forward to the day when that will no longer be necessary. I think his low-key approach is a good first step in that direction.

I agree with Anon 1:58 re: houses in Hancock Park having the potential to fit anyone's taste. That, plus the central location, walkability and prices still somewhat on Earth (compared to the Platinum Triangle) make HP one of my favorites. @ Anon 5:47 - Rossmore is busy, but not as bad as the east/west streets like 3rd or 6th - where Christian Audigier is still trying to unload his $5 million house for $8 million.

Because it's been a topic of discussion here, it should probably also be clarified that the three children are not Bomer's biological children - he's the step-dad. They are Simon Hall's (Matt's husband) children via surrogate - he's talked about it publicly in 'W' magazine.

BTW, I'm surprised if the house really was just bought by Bomer alone, not Matt AND Simon, although of course Simon could already have real estate in his portfolio and Matt wanted to be sole investor in this property.

Well put, lil' gay boy. Image trumps talent, for an actor/actress/celeb. The smart cookie of whatever sexual identity keeps the really personal parts of their personal life...personal. And that applies to the boring parts just as much as the juicy juice.

I suspect the rare cases where famous successfully coupled couples share all about their couplehood (sheesh) probably involves presenting an agreed-upon plausible image to the public but withholding most actual details. Said details may be quite mundane, they may be more or less interesting than the publicly disclosed fakish tidbits, but they remain private and not subject to second-guessing and analysis and outside interference. Not a unique or new concept. In fact I first heard a variant of this elaborated in a college anthro class.

And I bet Mr. Halls, an experienced PR guy, knows all this and then some.

I am not familiar with Matt Bomer and Simon Hall because I am hopelessly square. Nevertheless, I am familiar with GLBT families and their children, which are different than mixed gender parent families and their children.

Mr. Bomer and Mr. Hall are married, and are both dads. Period.

To legally protect their family and their children, Mr. Bomer and Mr. Hall might want to explore second-parent adoption for Mr. Bomer.

I was simply stating a fact regarding Halls being the biological father. No insult or 'lessening' of Matt's position as a parent or father of the three children was meant by my comment. I don't consider "step-dad" a perjorative term, simply an indication of biological relationship.

just so everyone knows: matt actually is a step-dad. not just not the biological father. simon halls decided, as a well-to-do SINGLE gay man, to have kids. He had one, and then twins. THEN he started dating matt bomer, in that order. simon talked about it in some magazine article that was talking about how people in hollywood and the entertainment industry are trending more towards single parent adoptions. regardless of gender or biological relationship, what happened with him and matt is usually considered a "step-" situation in parenting.

and i do think it's rude to call someone a step-father if you're talking about a situation where two men in a relationship decide to have a baby using one's sperm. after all, it's not their fault they don't have a womb, so i don't think it's fair to qualify their fatherhood because of their biology. but i do think it's fair to qualify their fatherhood based on the choices they did (or did not) make at the time those choices would have been relevant (e.g., at the time of the conception of a child).